Tag Archives: Regret

Friedrich Nietzsche on Doing It Again

Posted on by

Friedrich Nietzsche had a recurring thought about recurrence.

In one of his early works, he imagines people being asked “whether they would wish to live through the past ten or twenty years once more”.

In a later work, he appears to raise the stakes:

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more” … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine”.

Assuming the demon and I didn’t get hung up on questions like “Who are you anyway?” and “Are you sure about that?”, I’d want some clarification. (I can’t imagine gnashing my teeth, since I don’t know what that is.)

Tell me, demon. Would I know that I was living my life again? There wouldn’t seem to be much point in doing it again from scratch.

The demon would probably have a ready answer: if you knew you were living it again, it wouldn’t be the same as living it the first time. You’d have more knowledge the second (or third, or fourth) time around, and presumably be in a position to make different choices.

Right, the Debbie Anderson thing again.

But if I didn’t know anything more this time or remember how things turned out before, what difference would it make? Even if things turned out differently, I wouldn’t know they were turning out differently. I’d simply be living my life as if it were the first time. In fact, for all I know, I’m living my life right now for the umpteenth time, even though it sure feels like the very first (and only) time.

The demon might be nonplussed at this point. Hey, he might say, I never thought of it that way. If you remember you’re doing it again, you’re not really doing it again. But if you don’t know you’re doing it again, you might as well be doing it for the first time. Oh well, I guess it was a stupid question to begin with.

Nietzsche clearly didn’t think it was a stupid question. He thought that a superior person would willingly live the very same life over and over again. To do so would be the highest affirmation. Life is tragic and full of pain, but the best among us will embrace it anyway.

He’s probably right about that, even though the idea of “eternal recurrence” is a dead end.

What some of us really want, of course, is to go back and do things differently. If I could only go back to that one moment ten years ago, or forty years ago, I’d do it better this time.

Since we’re merely human, fantasizing about the past is much easier than getting the future right.

An Itch Better Left Unscratched

Posted on by

Do you ever scratch an itch and later regret it?

Way back in 1969, when I was a senior at a suburban California high school, I missed the notice about reserving a copy of the yearbook. Maybe I was distracted. Maybe I was home with mononucleosis. So when the yearbooks were distributed later that year, I didn’t get one.

Being 17 and relatively unassertive, it didn’t even occur to me to ask if there were extra copies available.

This has bothered me ever since, not in a big way, but in an itchy way. That’s why I looked on eBay recently to see if anyone was selling a copy of La Mirada High School’s 1969 edition of La Capa (why anyone would use the Spanish words for “the layer” or “the coating” as the title of a high school yearbook is a good question, but probably says something about the quality of language instruction at La Mirada High in the 1960s).

Surprisingly, someone who specializes is selling such things was.

My used copy of La Capa arrived two days ago. It once belonged to a sophomore named Lenny. So far as I know, we never met, but I hope his yearbook didn’t end up on the open market because he’s no longer with us.

After a brief look and some excited sharing, I put my new possession aside until this morning.

Having paged through it now, I’m wondering: 

Who the hell were all those people? Only a very small percentage of them looked familiar at all.

What motivated the La Capa papparazzi to document the activities of a small social elite?

Why didn’t I participate in the amazing assortment of clubs and activities that La Mirada High offered? (Apparently, I was vice-president of one organization, but you couldn’t prove it by me.)

Why didn’t I talk to the completely charming Debbie Anderson as much as possible? Especially since I was considered intelligent back then (there are clearly different kinds of intelligence, some more valuable than others). 

And how could I ever have been that skinny?

I’m convinced it would have been better to have kept my $50 (including shipping) and avoided this excursion down memory lane. The past is past for a reason.